A major air traffic control failure that disrupted the return to the UK of thousands of travellers after a long bank holiday weekend will cost airlines tens of millions of pounds, an industry official says on Wednesday.
“For the industry as a whole, we will have close to £100 million (€116 million) of additional costs that airlines will have faced,” the director general of the International Air Transport Association (Iata), Willie Walsh, told the BBC on Wednesday.
According to the former boss of British Airways and its parent company IAG, the airlines will in particular have to bear costs relating to passenger assistance charges and disruptions to crew and aircraft schedules.
The breakdown of the British air traffic control system on Monday forced air agents to manually enter flight plans, leading to a huge number of delays and cancellations.
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NATS, the British air traffic control authority, told AFP on Tuesday that it would take several days to return to normal and get all travellers home.
More than 1,500 flights to and from the UK – more than a quarter of the total – had to be cancelled on Monday; a further 345 were pulled on Tuesday, according to specialist company Cirium.
It is estimated that well over 100,000 people had their flights cancelled on Monday, with the blackout described by UK Transport Secretary Mark Harper as the biggest for nearly a decade.
